


the robbing of the nest

by zechariahfour (sodas)



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Child Death, During Canon, Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 18:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17006610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodas/pseuds/zechariahfour
Summary: “I won’t touch you,” he reassures her. “It’s disrespectful.” Then he leans back where he sits, settling one of his palms onto the floor. “I should pity you…” This, a musing, and a wistful one. “You had a hard position either way. To look like your mother is—well, I should pity you. Especially in anticipation of her beauty. But to look like your father would make you ugly, and isn’t—” A laugh flutters out of him, higher and thinner than butterflies. “Isn’tthata sadness?”He covers his mouth. Then he lowers his hand.“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “That was disrespectful of me as well.”(Lee Yut-Lung and the deaths of his brothers.)





	the robbing of the nest

**Author's Note:**

> please be mindful: this story contains descriptions of children in traumatic, violent situations, as well as the aftermath of murder. frankly it's your typical banana fish fare, but regardless.

He toes off his slippers—he navigates well. His feet are deft. He tells them to be deft, and they are wisps in accordance with his wishes. Isn’t it good, to say a thing and be obeyed. And doesn’t it make sense, that from head to toe, his own loyalty is all that he has.

These thoughts are no more than grass beneath his belly. He can’t care enough to even be ticklish. He does not care enough. He can only curve forward—he will only curve forward—and to the left—yes, to circumvent this corpse. He is sleeker than scales; he is smoother than them; it’s true that he has a warmer body. If a serpent’s self could be perfected, it would be him. He is, to be sure, low in the dust, squirming about the boots of great men, but they must know this at least: his bite is the best of them all.

The ball of his foot guides him just away from the blood right here. The curve of his shoulder keeps him on course, swaying his body with studied grace. Now he’s alighting unto the center of the room. Now he surveys the spread of his coup. The vases are broken, all but two, and they’ve left fractured dragons lying around like a hazard. The flowers have been strewn across the carpet for hours, and so are soft and wilting. There are flecks of gold dusting here and there and there—gold leaf, blown out and about in ruin. Yut-Lung deserves, just as much, to be among the gold. Not for decadence, but with its ruin. He does deserve to be blown about, and he thinks this—he thinks of all that he deserves—while he’s kneeling into the gold flakes and the flowers. There’s a little girl just feet away—look, how close she is—he could reach out and touch her if he chose. He won’t do that to her. The fear in her face is a bloodless porcelain. She has flowers in her hair. She had more of them before, but they must have fallen away, as she was running from…

She did leave a path. Little footprints, the blood now thick-set and dark; and the sparse scatter of silky petals. Yut-Lung looks along them until he finds the body at the trailhead. The woman is wearing clothes that had been beautiful, but her limbs are stiff and disgusting, and her hair is witch’s hair, or sea grass. The twist of her mouth, too, is unattractive, with a lip pulled high to expose her dried out gums. But Yut-Lung can still observe the shape of her noise; her sweet chin; her eyelashes. He looks again to the little girl, then clucks his tongue. Her frightened face hasn’t wavered. Again like porcelain, it holds its shape.

“Your mother,” he confirms, and then with real sympathy: “You look like her. It’s cruel of me to say…” He’s been kneeling, but now he sits, folding his legs. His thigh breaks a flower stem. “But it was kind of me to rid you of it. No, surely… you wouldn’t believe that, would you? It’s all right.” He reaches to the side of himself, and plucks—like ripe fruit, like an egg from a nest—one of the girl’s discarded petals from the carpet. He sets it, then, in the space between them—slow, as if not to spook a rabbit. “I won’t touch you,” he reassures her. “It’s disrespectful.” Then he leans back where he sits, settling one of his palms onto the floor. “I should pity you…” This, a musing, and a wistful one. “You had a hard position either way. To look like your mother is—well, I should pity you. Especially in anticipation of her beauty. But to look like your father would make you ugly, and isn’t—” A laugh flutters out of him, higher and thinner than butterflies. “Isn’t _that_ a sadness?”

He covers his mouth. Then he lowers his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “That was disrespectful of me as well.”

The air is like the blood, now: congealing, and spent. No hope of putting it back into the body or back toward the heart. The harm of it is uncomfortable, and Yut-Lung had presumed himself prepared for discomfort. He had lauded himself, even, as skilled in bearing it, under any circumstance. But he does not like this. His brow is pinched, his mouth is pinched, and he shifts in place. He curls his fingers against the carpet and rearranges his legs. “I do wonder,” he says at last, and when he tilts his head, the gleam that catches him is the same as the half-dried blood all over. When his eyes glitter, it’s not unlike this girl’s porcelain. “I do have to wonder if you’d recognize my face. A photograph, or something. No? Probably not, right? And they never let me meet any of you. For the best, I think. It’s cruel, as I said, and you know, I’m cruel, too; but I would have told you in front of everyone that you look like your mother.” Of course the girl bears no light of understanding. Of course she can’t commiserate. “Your father would have hurt me for that,” Yut-Lung explains. “While we were alone, I’m sure. Not when you could have seen it.” Yut-Lung sniffs a bit, either derisive or thoughtful, and presses his wrist to his mouth while he looks around. Sure enough, this girl’s father lies at the back of the grand room. His shape is unmistakably human, if only for the opulent three-piece suit he wears, but ultimately the sight is hard for Yut-Lung to measure. The words ‘dog food’ and ‘curdled’ come to mind, and then he isn’t sure what he sees. Something between his eyes and his brain severs safely. Still, he does leave his eyes on the dead man, even as he leans conspiratorially toward the girl. “Neither you nor I resemble him,” he whispers. “I look like my mother, too. I don’t know; he might not have laid a hand on his own daughter. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you he wasn’t kind to the blood of his brother. And I cannot be kind to the blood of mine.” Which, indeed, has been indiscriminately splattered about the room. They were having some sort of party here. Yut-Lung wonders what it was for.

And it doesn’t bother him that his explanations—his very solid justifications—can earn no absolution from this little girl. “I understand you better than you would have ever understood me,” he tells her. “You look like a coward, a startled mouse, the way you fled in this direction. It’s totally pathetic. But I don’t think poorly of you for it. In fact, I would commend you.” He nods, then, as if saying what he just did makes it true. As if he believes it now that it’s been spoken. “I would,” he confirms. “Running away was the right thing to do. You didn’t get far at all, but imagine if you had. Imagine if I had done just that. I wouldn’t have seen what I did and maybe I’d feel differently about things. And you… well. You have short legs and you were outnumbered. You can’t be blamed for it. It’s not like staying at your mother’s side would have saved her.”

For the first time, he realizes he’s sounding crazy. He blinks at himself; parts his lips, takes a breath; winces in slow motion, as if pain is settling onto him like syrup. There’s no comfort to be found here, and no forgiveness either. “I wouldn’t have asked you to forgive me,” he insists to her, defensively. “I did nothing to him he wasn’t owed. I took nothing here that wasn’t owed to me.” He’s looking at her again, unsure of when he turned his head, unable to get her mother’s bare gums away from the view of her small face. Ugly. How ugly to see a brutalized woman in the features of a little child. And it comes to him abruptly, faster than fear or pain: no wonder his brothers tormented him and his face as well. Imagine what disgusting recollections had replaced his face for them. As beautiful as they said he was, they had seen how ugly he could look by watching the final grotesque expressions his dying mother made. Unbidden—yes, he almost begs himself _not_ to think it before the thought has fully formed—he wonders if he would have looked at this child and been enraged by her mother’s offensive dying ugliness—if he would have hit her for it.

Yut-Lung wrenches himself to his feet with all the violence of another murder. ‘I didn’t want that,’ he thinks. ‘I didn’t want that.’ He thinks, too, that he might tell her out loud that he’s sorry, but then again, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s calling himself names. Maybe he’s admitting to his own cowardice. His feet are bare and he’s not skirting around the blood and the bodies when he stumbles away from the dead little girl. Not the flowers or the broken vases, either. He doesn’t vomit, and somehow he’s even more disgusted with himself for that.

One of Golzine’s aides catches sight of him before he even makes it into the hallway. “Mr. Lee,” says the man, too leaden to be surprised. The bastard likely isn’t taken aback by it anyway, even as Yut-Lung is sweating sickly. “Problem?”

“Of course not,” gasps Yut-Lung, and he pushes his hand against his forehead. He tries to swallow air like it’s water. It feels like hell, but he manages to straighten his back. “I was only paying my respects to my little niece.”

“Certainly,” says the man. He’s wearing sunglasses, and Yut-Lung wants to yell that he’s a coward, too, for not letting Yut-Lung see the contempt in his eyes. Yut-Lung does not yell. Yut-Lung does not vomit or collapse. “If I may remark on it—the Monsieur did recommend against your visit for this reason. If you wished to observe our handiwork, we would have provided photographs.”

Yut-Lung leans against the doorframe. Word of this will reach Golzine, of course. There’s no avoiding that. He’s disgusted with himself for not throwing up, but now he’s relieved he didn’t. “Please don’t take offense,” he says gently, and mustering anything gentle from within himself nearly sends him to his knees in his exhaustion. He feels like he’s digging a grave with his bare hands. He feels like he has been digging this grave for ten years, and he wishes he’d reach the bottom already so he can lie down inside it. “You’ve all done so well, and I am so thankful.” He takes a little breath. He does it so gently. “I’d like to go home now.”

He leaves the room; the hallway; the building. He gets into the car without his slippers. He goes into his home with his father’s bloodline dried onto his heel. In the night, he looks at himself in the mirror. He touches beneath his eyes, then his cheekbones. He passes his hand over his brow. He puts his fingers to the corner of his mouth and then presses them to his chin. Marveling, in awe of his mother’s final whines, Yut-Lung thinks, ‘Yes, no wonder.’ His brothers were right. He looks an awful lot like her. She was very ugly when she died. The trick is to drink until she is beautiful again.


End file.
